Prednisone and stress levels | Recreation and Sports

September 3rd, 2012 by Leave a reply ?

The adrenal gland is one of the key ways in which the body reacts to stressful situations. If the gland shuts down, you feel tired all the time and find it difficult to react positively to stress. It should be flight or fight in a physical contest. It should be fight from your autoimmune system if you are attacked by disease or your life is threatened in some other way. Unfortunately, with Prednisone in your body in high dosage or over a long period of time, your body slowly loses it ability to fight stress. This has a number of important consequences.

We start with the need to have dental work or surgery. Such events are stressful and you must warn your dentist or surgeon in advance that you are taking a corticosteroid. It may be necessary to adjust the dosage or to take other drugs to compensate when you experience the anticipated reaction to treatment. However, not all stress comes along in a predictable way. Everyday life is full of excitement and, without realizing it, you can find yourself unexpectedly under pressure through lack of sleep, overworking and, sad to say, a poor diet. If the cortisol levels fall, your body will not produce the necessary increase in hormone levels and you will find the situation increasingly difficult to deal with. If a serious injury or disease comes along, you will need to increase the dose. The hospital will also do regular blood tests to adjust the dose and use intravenous fluids to prevent fluid levels from dropping to dangerous levels.

In more extreme circumstances, this produces adrenal fatigue or Addison?s Disease where the body is unable to keep up with the demands of stress. Untreated this can cause long term anxiety or depression, and more generally weaken your autoimmune system making you more vulnerable to diseases. Although you can combat increases in stress by taking a higher dosage of Prednisone, this is undesirable. At higher dosages, the mood-affecting side effects become more likely. The first signs will be insomnia, followed by increasing levels of agitation. The only response is to taper down the dosage and begin separate treatment for the psychological disorders.

Source: http://www.ypsummit.org/214-prednisone-and-stress-levels.html

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